like town names are very unique; you probably couldn’t find the same 2 towns next to each other very often

but mark steve chris hannah claire laura etc are all very common across the anglosphere

  • TheWeirdestCunt@lemm.eeEnglish
    281·
    1 year ago

    Because given names used to be pretty much unique in each village and you wouldn’t travel much, that’s why only nobility had surnames and regular people didn’t. There’s no need to differentiate which Chris you mean if there’s only one Chris in the village.

    • alokir@lemmy.world
      131·
      1 year ago

      They absolutely had people with the same name in the same village. But they had nicknames, and this is also where a lot of family names come from.

      Limpy Chris, Chris the smith, Lying Chris, small Chris, Brad’s son Chris etc.

      Also, countries (at least in Europe) didn’t really keep track of people but churches did. You couldn’t give someone a name that the village priest refused to baptise them as (I hope that’s the proper English name for it).